Gibson Resurrects `Passion'

The Actor/director Vows His `Softer' Version Will Become A Permanent Part Of Eastertime.

March 12, 2005|By Kevin Eckstrom Religion News Service

Easter is that time of year that conjures up images of bunny rabbits, Easter bonnets, jelly beans -- and Mel Gibson?

The actor/director who unveiled his blood-soaked vision of Jesus' last hours in The Passion of the Christ last year is back with a "softer" version that hit at least 500 theaters nationwide on Friday.

The Passion Recut is something of a Second Coming for Gibson, a devout Roman Catholic whose film was snubbed by Hollywood despite heartland appeal and a global box-office gross of $611 million. Gibson promises to release his film each year at Easter -- a prospect that, for better or worse, could make the film a permanent part of the American Easter experience.

Gibson says he cut six minutes of "some of the more horrific aspects" from the film, in part to broaden its appeal for younger viewers. The original was rated "R"; the recut also would have been rated "R" but is being released without a rating.

Some fans say the film reinforces what they see as the central message of Easter and at the heart of Christian faith: the immense suffering that Jesus endured to save sinners.

"Prior to the movie, the depiction of Christ's Crucifixion was stained glass windows," says the Rev. Jim Buckman, whose Springfield, Mo., church will screen the film again the night before Easter. "It was almost surreal, it wasn't really reality.

"Gibson set out to show everything. He wanted to show every blow, every strike. He didn't make it nearly what it could have been."

Churches have found many ways to incorporate the film into Easter observances -- from group outings to weekly viewings alongside the Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent. Down the road from Buckman's church, all 37 adult Sunday-school classes at James River Assembly of God in Ozark, Mo., are spending the four weeks before Easter studying the film.

Buckman was so taken with the movie that he now projects a half-dozen still images from the film during weekly Communion at River of Life Lutheran Church. He says it's like a 21st-century icon, a visceral way for worshippers to meditate on Jesus' words, "This is my body, which is given for you . . ."

His flock's reaction to seeing snippets of Gibson's film each week? "They loved it," he says.

In many ways, the film has become a sort of theological Rorschach in which viewers gauge their own beliefs and comfort zones when confronted with Jesus' bloody human death.

Christian fans of the film say it is impossible to get to Easter Sunday without first enduring Good Friday, the Crucifixion day portrayed by Gibson. The Rev. John Bartunek, a Catholic priest who was a consultant on the film, credited Gibson for putting "flesh and bones" back on Jesus.

"The meaning of Easter isn't bunnies and jelly beans," says Bartunek, author of the new book Inside the Passion. "If [the film] becomes a fixture, great, I say. Great. It reminds of us what Easter is all about."

Although the edited version spares viewers some of the most graphic violence in the original film, critics say it still contains troubling overtones that seem to blame some of Jesus' fellow Jews for his death.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, remains a vocal opponent of Gibson's film. He criticized Gibson for responding to the concerns about violence but not how the film portrays the Jews.

"To have available, year in and year out, this perverse, hateful, inaccurate version of the Passion, which is totally out of sync with Christian thought and today's theology, is troubling," Foxman says.